research

 
Supernova remnant E0102-7219 in the Small Magellanic Cloud

The Giant Magellan Telescope (GMT) is composed of seven 8.4m mirrors, which is the equivalent of ~ one 25m telescope, which gives it a light-gathering power over six times greater than the current largest telescope (the Keck 10m telescopes).

The Hobby-Eberly Telescope (HET) is a 9.2m telescope located in west Texas.  In 2011, the VIRUS instrument will be permanently mounted to the HET, and the HETDEX survey will begin.

My Research Interests My job is research oriented, and my main research interest is in the area of galaxy evolution. In the past, I have mainly studied Lyman alpha emitters, which are a type of distant galaxy. I studied them extensively in my thesis, and you can find more info on my thesis research page. I am still studying Lyman alpha galaxies, but I am also widening my interests, and currently I’m most interested in tracing the evolution of galaxy physical properties across cosmic time. Im doing this in two ways. First, I’ve begun studying the characteristics of the most distant galaxies, which we can see with the new Wide Field Camera 3 on the Hubble Space Telescope. We’ve written a paper on this, which you can learn more about, and see the press release here. I will continue these studies with incoming data from the CANDELS project. More recently, I’ve become interested in using near-infrared spectroscopy to study the physical properties of distant galaxies - specifically Lyman alpha emitters at z ~ 2-3. In my initial project on this topic, we found that LAEs have lower metallicities than other galaxies at similar masses and redshift. This galaxy sample has come from the pilot survey for HETDEX (Hobby-Eberly Telescope Dark Energy Project), which is a very large integral field unit spectrograph which will find nearly one million Lyman alpha galaxies, starting in 2010. analyzing spectroscopy of lensed high-redshift galaxies. The lensing effect allows us to examine these objects in much greater detail than is typically possible at these redshifts. Read more about it on my current research page. At Texas A&M, I’ve become a part of the HETDEX (Hobby-Eberly Telescope Dark Energy Project), which is a very large integral field unit spectrograph which will find nearly one million Lyman alpha galaxies, starting in 2010. Texas A&M is rapidly growing in astronomy, recently joining ambitious projects such as the Giant Magellan Telescope and the Dark Energy Survey. We are also starting a brand new outreach program.Thesis_Research.htmlThesis_Research.htmlhttp://candels.ucolick.org/http://www.hetdex.org/shapeimage_2_link_0shapeimage_2_link_1shapeimage_2_link_2shapeimage_2_link_3
Links Curriculum Vitae Publications Current Research Thesis Research My NASA ADS Listings Recent Travel Some telescopes I’ve observed on Cool astro videos TAMU Astronomy TAMU Public Outreach HETDEX Giant Magellan Telescope Dark Energy SurveyResearch_files/cv.pdfResearch_files/publist.pdfCurrent_Research.htmlThesis_Research.htmlhttp://adsabs.harvard.edu/cgi-bin/nph-abs_connect?db_key=AST&db_key=PRE&qform=AST&arxiv_sel=astro-ph&arxiv_sel=cond-mat&arxiv_sel=cs&arxiv_sel=gr-qc&arxiv_sel=hep-ex&arxiv_sel=hep-lat&arxiv_sel=hep-ph&arxiv_sel=hep-th&arxiv_sel=math&arxiv_sel=math-ph&arxiv_sel=nlin&arxiv_sel=nucl-ex&arxiv_sel=nucl-th&arxiv_sel=physics&arxiv_sel=quant-ph&arxiv_sel=q-bio&sim_query=YES&ned_query=YES&adsobj_query=YES&aut_logic=OR&obj_logic=OR&author=Finkelstein%2C+Steven&object=&start_mon=&start_year=&end_mon=&end_year=&ttl_logic=OR&title=&txt_logic=OR&text=&nr_to_return=200&start_nr=1&jou_pick=ALL&ref_stems=&data_and=ALL&group_and=ALL&start_entry_day=&start_entry_mon=&start_entry_year=&end_entry_day=&end_entry_mon=&end_entry_year=&min_score=&sort=SCORE&data_type=SHORT&aut_syn=YES&ttl_syn=YES&txt_syn=YES&aut_wt=1.0&obj_wt=1.0&ttl_wt=0.3&txt_wt=3.0&aut_wgt=YES&obj_wgt=YES&ttl_wgt=YES&txt_wgt=YES&ttl_sco=YES&txt_sco=YES&version=1Travel.htmlTelescopes.htmlTelescopes.htmlvideos.htmlhttp://astronomy.tamu.eduhttp://astronomy.tamu.edu/TAMU_Astrophysics/Outreach.htmlhttp://hetdex.org/http://www.gmto.org/http://www.gmto.org/http://www.darkenergysurvey.org/shapeimage_3_link_0shapeimage_3_link_1shapeimage_3_link_2shapeimage_3_link_3shapeimage_3_link_4shapeimage_3_link_5shapeimage_3_link_6shapeimage_3_link_7shapeimage_3_link_8shapeimage_3_link_9shapeimage_3_link_10shapeimage_3_link_11shapeimage_3_link_12shapeimage_3_link_13shapeimage_3_link_14
Updates I’ve been selected as a Hubble Fellow for 2011! See the press release here. I’ve just had two papers published on the metallicities of Lyman alpha galaxies at high and low redshift. A paper I wrote recently on the physical properties of the most distant galaxies is now in the Astrophysical Journal.http://hubblesite.org/newscenter/archive/releases/2011/09/full/http://adsabs.harvard.edu/abs/2011ApJ...729..140Fhttp://adsabs.harvard.edu/abs/2010arXiv1012.4010Fhttp://adsabs.harvard.edu/abs/2010ApJ...719.1250Fhttp://adsabs.harvard.edu/abs/2010ApJ...719.1250Fshapeimage_4_link_0shapeimage_4_link_1shapeimage_4_link_2shapeimage_4_link_3shapeimage_4_link_4

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Texas A&M is rapidly growing in astronomy, recently joining ambitious projects such as the Giant Magellan Telescope and the Dark Energy Survey. We also have an active outreach program.http://www.gmto.orghttp://www.gmto.orghttp://www.darkenergysurvey.org/http://www.darkenergysurvey.org/http://astrophysics.tamu.edu/TAMU_Astrophysics/outreach.htmlhttp://astrophysics.tamu.edu/TAMU_Astrophysics/outreach.htmlshapeimage_5_link_0shapeimage_5_link_1shapeimage_5_link_2shapeimage_5_link_3shapeimage_5_link_4shapeimage_5_link_5